


Just a Pinch (and It's Over)

by AgentNerd



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Anxiety, Diego Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Diego Hargreeves is a Momma's Boy, Diego-centric, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Injury, Medical Procedures, Needles, Overdosing, Phobias, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Tattoos, they all need hugs tbh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2019-11-25 23:50:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18173069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentNerd/pseuds/AgentNerd
Summary: Diego Hargreeves - a man who wears deadly, sharp knives on his body as easily and regularly as one would a wallet - is terrified of needles.  It's not irrational.  It isn't.An exploration of the five times Diego is crippled by his phobia, and the one time things are different.





	1. 1. Origins

**Author's Note:**

> My new obsession. All these characters are So Good, but Diego's nuances really spoke to me for this fic. Hope you enjoy.

Diego doesn’t know why he’s afraid of needles.  There was no traumatic incident that sparked his phobia, no psychological conditioning that fed it (not about needles, at least—god knows there was psychological conditioning abound in other areas of all their lives at the Academy).

You could call it an irrational fear for that reason, but that doesn’t seem quite right.  There is an inherent unpleasantness about needles: they’re sharp, they can hurt, break skin, draw blood even.  They’re small and invasive, and for some reason, that makes them scarier to Diego than other things that could hurt him.  A blade, a gun, a fist—those were at least honest ways of inflicting pain.  Or so his brain told him.

His earliest memory of needles is at four years old.  He and his six siblings are lined up in a neat, single-file line in the infirmary, not one of them fidgeting an inch while under the severe gaze of their father, who looms as always as an imposing presence in the corner of the room.  Pogo stands at the head of their line, a scrub-like, white apron over his normal, crisp suit and a tray of syringes on a table at his side.  The kind chimpanzee was not usually in charge of their medical care, but their most recent nanny had left just as quickly as all the others had seemed to over the past year, and Mom, as Diego would come to know her, would not be created for another two months.

Four-year-old Number Two (he doesn’t have a real name yet, none of them do) doesn’t know what these shots are supposed to do, but he knows to do as he’s told, and so he waits his turn and watches as Pogo prepares the syringes.  The silver needle seems to glint harshly in the sterile light of the room as he plunges it into a vial, drawing a clear liquid up into the barrel.  He pulls it out and depresses the plunger ever so slightly to release any possible air bubbles, and Two can’t help but notice how viciously sharp it looks.

Number One steps up with no hesitation, arm bared and ready, and the sharp smell of rubbing alcohol fills the air as Pogo wipes a swab over his arm before stabbing the needle into his skin. 

Stabbing.  That might have been a harsh word.  But that’s how it appears to Two, the needle piercing his skin, going _into_ his arm, into muscle, and it _lingers_ as Pogo emptied the syringe’s contents into One’s bloodstream, feeling like an eternity.  One, ever the strongest of them, doesn’t even flinch.  Two finds himself having to squeeze his eyes shut, an overwhelming feeling of nausea sweeping over him.

“Master Two,” Pogo says gently, “it’s your turn.”

Two opens his eyes to see that One is standing to the side with a plain, tan-colored bandage on his arm, leaving a clear avenue between Two and Pogo.  He steps up and swallows nervously, yanks up his shirt sleeve with white knuckles.  The swab soaked in alcohol is cold against his skin, and he watches with wide eyes as Pogo picks up the ready syringe, drawing it closer and closer to his arm…

It’s no more than an inch away when Two steps back abruptly.

“D-do I have t-t-to?” he stutters out, anxiety tinging his every word.  He regrets his actions almost immediately.  He can feel his siblings’ eyes burning holes into his back, and as soon as father barks out a reprimand, he flinches harshly.

“Number Two!  This vaccination is of the utmost importance for your health, and you _will_ take it without complaint!”

Two can only nod, averting his eyes to the floor as Pogo approaches him once more, but he can _feel_ the needle coming, and panic overwhelms him once more as he draws away.  “Ii-it’s just, I—” 

“Number One, restrain Number Two until Pogo is finished administering his vaccination.”

“N-no, p-p-please!” Two cries, but One is too loyal, and he has his arms around Two in an instant, his brute strength keeping him in place.  Tears slide down Two’s cheeks as he struggles in the hold, but it’s no use.

“Just try to relax, Master Two,” Pogo says sympathetically, but he quickly and resolutely plunges the needle into Two’s arm anyway.  There is a sharp flash of pain.  Two’s vision goes white, then black.

The next thing he knows, he’s lying down on his bed.  His arm throbs with a hot, dull pain.  His father, siblings, and Pogo are gone—he is alone.

He cries until he is called to dinner.


	2. 2. Accidents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little boys need their mothers.

Diego is six years old, and he’s feeling awesome.

Dad had given him his first set of real throwing knives as a birthday gift (practically-minded, as always.  Reginald Hargreeves had no room for sentiment), and he’s been practicing with them almost every waking hour since.  Up to that point, his training had consisted of honing his technical skills—perfecting his throwing speed, arc, accuracy, trajectory, and so forth—with relatively harmless objects.  He’d started with small rubber balls that could fit in his pudgy toddler hands, but soon upgraded to tennis balls, darts, boomerangs, and various other projectiles until he was eventually throwing weighted rubber knives.  Dad had hinted that the real things would be the next step in his training if he proved he was responsible enough for them, so Diego had been putting in extra effort in the weeks leading up to his birthday.  His hard work had not gone unnoticed.

 _"You have earned them,” Reginald said as Diego unrolled the cloth wrap that protected his brand new, beautiful knives, but it felt like the equivalent of putting his art up on the fridge, of taking him out to ice cream after the school play.  It felt like, “I’m proud of you,” and it was the first time he had ever associated that feeling with his father_.

Diego has a lot of things that made him feel inferior in life.  He’s the second smallest of all the Hargreeves boys (after Ben), he often struggles during school lessons, and he still can’t shake the stutter that tinges his voice every time he speaks.  But these knives?  They’re the one thing he has confidence in.  They make him feel powerful.

So of course, something has to mess it all up.

He’d been doing well before then—he really had!  Going through his normal training routine with ease, the knives in his hands feeling as natural as if they were an extension of his body.  He hadn’t so much as nicked himself since he got them. 

But that’s the thing.  Diego can rely on himself—it’s the others that throw him for a loop. 

Dad decided today was group training day.  They were playing a fucked up version of capture the flag, where a flag stood on a pedestal at the far end of the room, and the winner was the one who got it first.  He’d constructed an obstacle course (seriously, does he contract people for this stuff or something?  Diego had never seen the man come close to manual labor in his life) that was not only challenging to navigate but _actually tried to stop them_ from reaching their goal.  Turrets that fired rubber bullets.  Laser mazes.  Combat robots that rivaled Mom in AI but lacked even half of her emotional intelligence.

He’s tentatively excited.  This will be the first time that he’s been able to use his knives on something other than targets (no matter how much Luther annoyed him on a daily basis, he was firmly instructed that he was not allowed to seriously injure his siblings).  So he lines up at the starting point with his brothers and sister, waits for the go, and then sets off.

He hurdles over some low walls before he’s accosted by a robot.  One well-placed knife to the head sends it down, but Luther, Allison, and Ben have used that slight distraction to pull ahead of him.  Five, predictably, attempted to jump straight to the flag, but some kind of technology seems to prevent him from landing any closer than halfway across the room.  Diego dodges around Luther, who is currently grappling with another robot, and that’s when it happens.

He’s not sure who bumps into him.  It could have been Allison, trying to sneak ahead, or it could have been one of the tentacles Ben had just deployed to fight off some other obstacle in the course.  It could have even been Five, who had been forced to backtrack when he’d encountered a maze-like dead end.  All he knows is that one moment, he’s aiming a knife at a turret, and the next he’s being pushed in _front_ of the turret, and he releases the knife too soon as rubber bullets come flying out and the knife’s trajectory somehow changes to fly _toward_ him.

He throws his momentum to carry him out of range of the turret, but not before the knife, his beautiful, sharp knife, slashes through his side as it flies past him.  He falls to the ground.

Blood doesn’t faze Diego.  He’s gotten into plenty of small scrapes before—that time Five jumped in front of him during a stairs race and made him trip down the stairs and bust up his knees, the time he and Luther had gotten into a fight and he’d ended up with a broken nose, that one memorable occasion where he slipped on a patch of ice in front of the Academy and knocked out his two front teeth on the steps.  It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before.

There’s _so much_ of it now, though.  It slips past his fingers as he clenches a hand to his side, puddling on the tile floor, and it _hurts_ and maybe he’s starting to feel a bit lightheaded…

“C’mon, get up,” a voice encourages quietly, and suddenly Klaus has a hand wrapped around Diego’s arm and is pulling him up to his feet.  The rest of their siblings are far in front of them now, too worried about doing well in the exercise to notice, but Klaus has never seemed to care—with powers like Luther’s and Five’s on the table, these little games are basically rigged against him from the start.

“Number Four!  Return to training immediately!  Number Two, report to the infirmary!” Reginald snaps in his usual manner.  Klaus looks reluctant to let go, and Diego realizes he’s leaning just a bit too much into his little brother for stability.  He rights himself before giving a small nod of thanks to Klaus, and the other boy gives him one more look before hesitantly jogging after the rest of their siblings.

Diego briefly looks to his father as he makes his way out of the room.  Reginald doesn’t even spare him a glance, and it feels pretty par for the course.  His favorite tool to express disappointment in his children is indifference—and there’s no doubt he’s disappointed; Diego had failed.  True anger is only reserved for their worst fuckups, and metered praise to some is used as a weapon against the children he ignores.  Y’know.  Your typical, well-adjusted parenting techniques.

He’s halfway to the infirmary when he literally runs into his mother.  She zeroes in on his injury in an instant—perhaps mother’s intuition, perhaps because of the blood staining his clothes and dripping onto the freshly-waxed floor. “Oh, Diego!” she says in surprise.  “What’s happened?”

“Accidentally c-cut myself in t-training,” he says.

“Oh, well, we’ll fix that right up,” she assures, wrapping an arm around him and ushering him the rest of the way.  She helps ease the Academy blazer off his shoulders, then strips away his sweater and shirt, revealing the ugly looking gash still oozing crimson blood against the pale skin of his side.  He climbs onto the infirmary cot and she examines the wound, prods it gently (though Diego still lets out a hiss as the pain flares), then steps back.

“I’m afraid this is going to need stitches,” she tuts, and alarm bells instantly go off in Diego’s brain.

“C-c-can’t you j-just put a b-b-bandage on it or something?  P-p-please?” he begs desperately.  His stammer worsens by the second in time with his anxiety.

“I’m sorry dear, it’s just slightly too deep for that.  It’ll be over before you know it, though, I promise.”

She applies something to the area that dulls the pain and makes him slightly numb, and he watches with wide, horrified eyes as she prepares a suture kit at a table next to his cot.  She catches his gaze and pauses, setting down the supplies and reaching out a hand to card through his hair.

“Everything’s going to be okay.  Just close your eyes, sweetheart.”

Reluctantly, he does, because she’s his mom, and he always listens to her in the end.  Her hand leaves his hair as she begins to stitch him up, and it feels like something has been stolen from him.  There is no pain as she continues with her ministrations, but a slight tugging sensation of the needle and thread passing through him pervades amongst the anesthetic and makes his skin crawl.  Nausea builds at the back of his throat. 

She must be able to sense his unease, because her hand drifts for a moment to meet his, her thumb brushing soothingly over his knuckles as she begins to hum.

He doesn’t know the tune, but he recognizes it as the same one she hums occasionally as she cooks them breakfast, folds the laundry, works on her cross-stitch in the warm light of the picture gallery.  It’s slow, and soothing, and beautiful.  It’s her.  So he keeps his eyes shut and allows the song to overcome him with its warmth.  It settles his nerves, evens his breath, and then suddenly, she’s done.

“You’ve been so brave, Diego,” she says as she cleans the excess blood from his skin with a damp cloth.  He opens his eyes, and she’s beaming at him, and he can’t help but give a shaky smile too at the sight of her.  She cleans her own hands and then places a bandage over the neat row of stitches adorning his side, then opens her arms.  Diego practically leaps into her embrace, stitches be damned.  It’s his mom.  He melts into the affection she can only give him in private, away from the disapproving glare of his father.

“I love you.”

It’s the one thing he can always say without a stutter.

“I love you too, darling.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's my birthday, and it really, really sucked. Writing helps me through.
> 
> If you enjoyed this chapter, please let me know. I could use some positivity.


	3. 3. Symbols

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reggie is the master of psychological torture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all of your lovely comments. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Diego used to think tattoos were badass.  Cool, permanent images on your skin that made you look tough, like tigers, and skulls, and flames, and stuff. 

Then, of course, he finds out that they’re the result of a needle stabbing into your flesh hundreds if not thousands of times, over and over, injecting ink into your skin, and he quickly changes his mind.

Well, maybe not quite.  Objectively, that’s still pretty badass.  He just never wants to get one.

So of course, that’s when it suddenly becomes a mandatory part of their training.

Diego wonders where dear old Dad even found someone who was okay with tattooing six, barely-willing, twelve-year-old children.  One look at the man tells Diego that they probably don’t frequent the same social circles.  Then again, the question Diego should probably be asking is rather, how much did Dad pay him to do this?

Probably a lot.

God, rich people suck. 

They’re all sat in a row, backs straight, eyes ahead, forced to stare at the scruffy man with his dangerous-looking equipment and foreboding chair.  The room is silent, save for the soft crackling of flames in the fireplace.  They are expected to be proactive, to undertake this task without complaint and without being instructed—and yet, no one moves.  There is a sense of apprehension in all of their eyes, even Luther’s, though he is usually the first to comply with Dad’s demands.  No one, it seems, was ready for this.

They can’t continue with this inaction for much longer.  Dad will be angry if he has to command someone to go first.

Klaus, surprisingly, volunteers.

“Might as well get it over with,” he says in a lazy drawl that compliments the nonchalant attitude he’s started to perfect over the past couple of years.  The meekness he displayed as a young child is all but gone now—or at least, is repressed.  He falls into the tattoo artist’s chair and throws his arm out languidly, tilting his head back and closing his eyes, as if he were about to take a nap.

He flinches when the needle first touches his skin.  He recovers quickly at first, but as time goes on his jaw gets tighter and tighter, his eyes press together more deliberately, then his entire body grows tense, like a spring all coiled up.

He’s obviously not comfortable, but he’s not going to give Dad the satisfaction of crying out. 

When it’s finally over, Klaus rises from the chair and looks Reginald dead in the eye.  There’s something scathing about his look, but their father simply nods once in approval, and it breaks whatever was building in the space between them.  Klaus retreats to the opposite corner of the room.  Diego doesn’t miss how his limbs are shaking.

Allison springs up next, and she makes no attempt to hide the anxiety she’s feeling as she settles down into the chair.  She’s always worn her emotions on her sleeve, and that kind of access to her emotions would help make her a halfway decent actor later in life, but right now, it’s agonizing to watch.

The tattooist changes his needle and begins once again, the buzzing of the instrument filling the air.  She only lasts a minute before tears are streaming down her face.  Crying is frowned upon at the Umbrella Academy—at least, it is in front of Reginald—but she’s disciplined enough to not make a sound, so it seems that an allowance is made.

Diego doesn’t dare look away, even though every ounce of sense within him is screaming to.  It would probably be against the rules, anyway.  Because this is all a part of it.  Witnessing their siblings’ pain, the horrific anticipation of waiting for their turn, the stress of not being able to do anything but watch.  It’s all mind games.  Calculated, psychological torture.  Did Reggie have to learn how to be this sadistic, or does it just come naturally?

Allison’s tattoo is done, and she seeks comfort by huddling close to Klaus.  He wraps an arm around her in a hug, and something in her seems to break.  She curls into his chest, her sniffles and sobs ever so slightly audible now, and Diego notices that there are tears sliding down Klaus’s cheeks too.

He can’t take this.  His heart is hammering in his chest, and at this rate, the stress will kill him before anything else has a chance to.

So he stands up and plants himself firmly in the tattooist’s chair.

Immediately, it feels like a mistake.  He can’t see his crying siblings anymore, but the sight of the remaining, distressed ones and his persistently disapproving father isn’t much better.  When he looks to mom, she gives him a sad little smile.  It’s not comforting.

Adrenaline fills his veins.  He feels lightheaded as his body goes into fight or flight mode, but he can do neither.  There’s no escape now.  His muscles tense as he outstretches his arm which he knows can’t be good, but there’s absolutely no in hell he’s going to relax now.  The tattoo artist lowers the needle to his skin.

It hurts.  Oh god, it hurts.  He’s been hit, cut, kicked, stabbed—he even dislocated his shoulder once during an unfortunate training exercise.  They all hurt immensely less than this did now.  When he got injured, the pain was always fleeting: it happened, then it was fixed.  This is persistent, deliberate, inflicted by someone who seems entirely indifferent to Diego’s discomfort.  It’s so much worse.

He makes the mistake of looking at his arm and seeing the skin tinged black and red with ink and blood.  He swallows down a wave of nausea and decides to keep his eyes resolutely trained ahead instead.

Mom tries to reach out for his free hand at some point, when the pain and anxiety verge on unbearable and he reflexively starts wriggling his legs, desperate for an escape he cannot make.  He recoils at her touch—the first time he’s ever rejected her comfort.  Because it all hurts too much—the tattoo, the phobia, his siblings in pain—and she’s not doing a thing to stop it.  She’s just standing there, like some sort of _machine_ (she is a machine, she’s always been a machine, but she’s always been _mom_ first).  Her touch has fixed so much: her hand in his hair as she patches him up in the infirmary, her hug after he cries over not being able to get a word out of his mouth without stuttering over it, her kiss on his forehead as she tucks him back into bed after a particularly horrific nightmare. 

But her touch can’t fix this.

He catches her hurt expression out of the corner of his eye, but then sees her quickly recover with a look to Reginald and one of the generic smiles she always gives him.  He trains his eyes on a potted plant across the room after that, trying to think of how many ways he could throw a knife at it and make it shatter.  Anything to distract him from the pain.

It feels like an eternity before the buzzing stops and it is finally over.  Diego stands, shaking only slightly, and turns his back on his father.  A few years ago he might have searched for some indication of approval in the man’s steely features, but he doesn’t need or want it now.  When he reaches his other two newly-tattooed siblings, Allison throws her arms around him—they’re not particularly close, but she knows how much this hurts, and how even worse it must be for him—and he finds himself melting in her embrace.  He doesn’t cry, but that’s only because his eyes are closed tightly, harsh breaths coming out his nose.  He hears the tattoo machine start up again, but he doesn’t care to see who’s gone next.  Diego feels another arm wrapping around him and a head lands on his shoulder, partially covering his ear and blocking out some of the sound.  Klaus’s meekness may be gone, but his empathy is still there.

Reginald Hargreeves thought that branding his children would somehow unite them.  That a shared symbol on their wrists would make them a team.  He did not realize, as his children comforted each other through their pain, that any bond they shared came despite all of his efforts, not because of them.


	4. 4. Overdose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diego goes looking for trouble. He finds Klaus.

Then Five disappears.  It’s difficult on all of them.

Luther takes it as a personal failure, as he does most of the time when things go wrong.  He redoubles his efforts during training sessions, pushing himself until he practically collapses into bed each night.  Physical exhaustion, it turns out, is an extremely effective method for keeping unwanted thoughts at bay.

Allison cries.  Only for the first week or so, only in the dead of night, hidden safely under the covers and behind her closed bedroom door.  Never loud enough to attract unwanted attention.  When she has no more tears left to cry, she whispers rumors into the early hours of the morning, “ _I heard a rumor Five will come home.  I heard a rumor my brother is back.  I heard a rumor everything was back to normal._ ”  Any variation she can think of, an endless combination of words.  None of them work.  She still repeats them every night, though, as if they’re some kind of prayer.

Ben, ever the logical one, takes a more methodical approach.  He actually puts up posters and asks people around town if they’ve seen him.  When that fails, he starts to sneak into Five’s room and search through his books and papers, hunting for any information that could indicate where he might have gone.  For a while he even tries researching time travel, knowing it must be essential since it formed the argument that caused Five to leave in the first place.  The material is incredibly dense, heavy with math and theory that goes quickly over his head.  He doesn’t get very far.

Vanya retreats into herself even more, if that’s even possible, and the others pretend not to notice when she sneaks out of her room every night to turn on all of the lights in the house and make sandwiches for someone who’s never going to get them.

Klaus leaves the Academy for long stretches of time each day.  No one knows (or particularly cares) where he goes, but when he shows up at breakfast the next morning half the time he’s hungover, and the other half he’s still high from the previous night.  He’d tried his first sip of alcohol two years ago and had upgraded cigarettes to pot just before Five had left, and he’s not looking back.

Diego takes long walks.  The house has become especially suffocating, and Reginald has become somewhat…distracted, since the day Five disappeared.  He holes himself away up in his office for hours or days at a time, leaving vague instructions with Mom and Pogo to allow the children time for “independent study” that no one seems to enforce in any particular way.  Missions are rare these days.  So Diego gets out.  Walks up and down the city streets until he memorizes them, goes to the park and skips stones on the pond with incredible precision, catches up on years’ worth of cultural isolation by reading every single newspaper that has been left on bus stop benches. 

The first time he stops a crime is exhilarating.

It’s a pretty basic mugging.  He hears a muffled scream coming from an alley in one of the seedier parts of town one evening and plucks a knife from a disguised holster on his pant leg before rushing in to see what’s going on.  It’s a single attacker, gun raised and cornering a frail-looking older woman with a  large purse clutched in her hands.  Diego doesn’t even think, just throws the knife straight into the man’s outstretched hand.  It goes clean through, and the gun clatters to the ground immediately as he starts to wail in pain.  Diego kicks the man in the head to knock him unconscious and then rushes to the woman’s side; she looks shaken, but ultimately unharmed.

“Are you okay, ma’am?”

She looks at him with wide eyes, “I am now dearie.  Thank you so much, I think you might have saved my life.”

He’s not sure what to do with the compliment.  Sure, he’s heard endless amounts of praise from the public after successful missions before, but that was all for the _Umbrella Academy_.  This is different.  This is just for him.  It feels…nice.

He shrugs it off because he doesn’t know what else to do, then offers her his arm to guide her to a nearby corner store.  The kind shopkeeper there busies himself with making the woman tea and allows Diego to use his phone to call the police.

He can already hear sirens filling the air as he exits the shop and enters the alleyway once more to retrieve his knife.  The mugger is still out cold, will be for a while.  Good.  Diego leaves before the police can arrive—they’ve never quite liked the idea of the Umbrella Academy, only tolerated them because of Reginald Hargreeves’s massive donations to the city.  They won’t necessarily recognize him out of uniform, but he figures it’s better not to push his luck.

The vigilante spirit doesn’t leave him.

He soon manages to get his hands on a police radio.  That makes his daily walks extra efficient as he goes from petty crime to petty crime, stopping perpetrators in their tracks before the cops can ever get there.  It’s liberating, to be able to do this on his own.  He’s never really felt like he worked best on a team anyway.  This way, he doesn’t have to rely on anyone else; he can use his skills to solve problems, fix crime, help people.

(Like he couldn’t help Five.)

One day, he finds himself in one of the roughest parts of the city.  Chatter on the radio has been particularly slow, so he decided to take himself to the trouble rather than have it find him.  It’s verging on nine o’clock, which isn’t particularly late (he has to be careful with the time—if he’s out past 11pm, he can technically be caught for breaking city curfew), but it’s sufficiently dark outside for crime to be brewing. 

Surprisingly, there’s not much going on.  Two women are smoking joints in a parked car at the side of the street, the foul-smelling smoke trailing idly out of the cracked driver's side window.  It’s not really worth telling them to stop.  A drunk man tries asking him for money, but doesn’t seem too bothered when Diego just passes him by.  A steady beat fills the air as he continues onward, and he soon comes upon a run-down house that’s hosting a party.  Colored lights flash through its thinly-curtained windows as bodies writhe to the music just beyond the cracked glass of the front door, and a couple of young adults are perched on the railing of the porch, red solo cups in their hands.  There’s probably some underage drinkers in there.  Probably some drugs.  But again, not the kind of thing that he would really stop.

The buildings become more and more dilapidated as he moves forward—some of them occupied, some of them not.  This is becoming squatter territory: refuge for the homeless looking for a roof where they won’t be bothered, runaways, drug addicts.  It’s not the kind of place the average person goes to after dark, but Diego is a bit desperate for some action.

(It might be exactly a year since Five went missing.)

(He might be trying not to think about it.)

He doesn’t get the action he wants.

Instead, he freezes at the mouth of an alleyway when he sees a familiar hot pink boa trailing along the grimy cement.  A boa he knows he saw draped dramatically over the shoulders of his hungover brother at breakfast this morning.

There’s a body slumped against the wall, unmoving.

Diego scrambles toward it.  “Klaus?!”

His brother doesn’t hear him.  Diego wants to fall down beside Klaus, but is halted by a sudden wave of fear as he fully takes in the scene around him.

Klaus’s eyes are closed, and the arm outstretched out away from his body is littered with purple bruises and puncture marks.  An almost-empty syringe sits idle on the ground, just beyond his splayed fingertips.  There’s needles everywhere—some of them are old and have obviously been there for a while, while others seem much newer.  The sight is paralyzing.  He knows Klaus was turning into something of a junkie, but it was just _weed_!  But this— _this_ —Diego has been sheltered for so long, he doesn’t yet have enough street knowledge to know exactly what is in those syringes, but he knows it’s much more serious than a joint.  This is hard stuff.  This is stuff that could kill someone.

It’s that thought that spurs him onward: Klaus needs his help.  He needs to help his brother.  He pushes past the rising panic in his body to kneel down carefully at his side.  He tries not to think about how the white moonlight on his brother’s pale, sunken face makes him look like a skeleton.  He presses two fingers to Klaus’s neck with one hand, uses the other to pull out a knife and hold it just above his brother’s lips.  The silver fogs up ever so slightly, and his pulse is weak and thready, but there. 

“Klaus,” he almost begs, shaking his shoulder, “Klaus, you idiot, wake up!”

There is no response.

This isn’t a lady being mugged, or a car being broken into.  Diego can’t fix this on his own.  So he carefully, _carefully_ picks Klaus up, cradles him in his arms, and starts running.

Thank god Dad made them do endurance runs for years.  Klaus is so small and waifish, he hardly weighs Diego down at all.  He’s thankful that no one really seems to be around at this time of night to ask questions—his first and only priority is to bring his brother home. 

He keeps two fingers jammed into Klaus’s limp wrist as he runs, reassuring himself that he’s still alive.  It’s only when he reaches the gates of the Umbrella Academy that it starts slowing to something even more alarming.  The front doors fly open with one well-placed kick.

“ _Mom!_ ” he shouts desperately.  Reginald hasn’t left his office all day; he will not hear the shouting.  Not today.

Grace appears from around the corner (walking quickly, not running, she’s not programmed to run, it’s unbecoming), “What’s wrong Diego?”

“Oh dear,” says Pogo as he arrives on her heels and takes in the scene.

“I f-found him in an alley.  H-he t-t-took something, I d-don’t know what, it was in a s-s-s-syringe, I d-didn’t know what to d-d-do, he won’t w-wake up…” tears start leaking from his eyes as the fear fully sets in.  His brother is dying.  He’s sure of it.

“Hush dear, you did exactly the right thing bringing him to us,” Grace assures him as she scoops Klaus out of his arms.  “Pogo and I will look after him, you just try to calm down and rest, alright?”

He just stands there, sputtering, as Grace bustles him away to the infirmary.  Pogo lingers for just a moment longer, places a hand on Diego’s arm.  “We’ll let you know when you can see him.”

It’s an answer to a question that Diego wasn’t capable of asking.  He nods shakily as the chimp gives him a comforting squeeze before following Mom and Klaus.

He’s not sure how long he sits in the foyer, waiting for news.  It feels like hours, but it might have been much shorter than that.  The tears eventually stop, his body stops shaking.  None of his siblings show up, but they’ve all been holed up in their own little worlds for a year now, so it’s not really surprising.  Diego’s guilty of it too.  How could he have not noticed Klaus’s drug addiction was getting worse?  How could he have not cared?

(He almost lost another brother.)

Eventually, Pogo returns.  He looks tired, but tries to give Diego a smile.  “He’s going to be just fine.  He’s resting now, but you can see him if you like.”

Mom is sitting at Klaus’s bedside when he enters the infirmary.  She’s running a hand through his hair and humming her song to him.  Her eyes look sad.  When she notices Diego, she presses one last kiss to Klaus’s forehead before standing and wrapping Diego in a hug.

“You did so well,” she praises.  Diego hugs her back, hard, but eventually, they part.  “I’ll leave you alone with him.”

She takes her leave as Diego takes her place in the chair.  Klaus looks downright frail, dressed in his pajamas with a heart monitor and IV trailing from his arm.  But his chest is rising and falling.  The heart monitor is beeping steadily.  He’s alive.

“Don’t you ever d-d-do something that s-stupid ever again,” he says quietly.

(Klaus will.)

He takes his brother’s hand, only because he knows he’s too unconscious to tease him about it later.  “I can’t lose anyone else.”

(He will.)


	5. 5. Memento

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diego's keeping a secret.

Diego’s fingers tremble as he picks up the needle.  In theory, it’s such a simple procedure.  He’s almost eighteen, he should be able to handle this.  Still though, even after all these years, he can’t keep the anxiety from flowing the moment he comes into contact with a needle.  He swallows it down best he can, because this is _important, dammit._

The first stitch is sloppy, and he somehow gets the thread tangled over on itself before he can get to the next one.  It nearly takes him an entire minute to untangle it, his nerves are so amped up.  He takes a deep breath.  Then another.  The second stitch isn’t much better, but at least it’s holding, really that’s all he needs it to do…

“Diego?”

The voice surprises him, and his hand slips.  The needle plunges right into the thumb of his non-dominant hand, and his breath seizes in his throat for a moment at the sight of it impaled into his skin.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Grace apologizes as she strides into his bedroom, falling in immediately at his side as she picks up his injured hand and plucks the needle from his thumb, then snaps the thread it’s connected to.  A small bead of blood wells up at the site of the injury, and Grace purses her lips in a thoughtful manner.

“Mom,” Diego gasps.

“Hold on for just a second, dear, I’ll go fetch a bandage from the medicine cabinet.”

She swiftly exits his room, needle pinched beneath her fingers.  A moment later, she returns with a bandage and antiseptic ointment in its place.  Tenderly, she applies the medication and secures the bandage, then tuts at him with a small smile on her face.  “I’ve been looking for my sewing kit everywhere.”

Diego eyes the basket of supplies at the end of his bed, then looks back to her apologetically.  “Sorry.”

She doesn’t seem offended in the slightest.  She picks up the black sweater discarded at his side and raises it to her eyes, closely inspecting the halfhearted stitching he’d attempted on the hole on its shoulders.

“This is a good start.  But it helps if you knot the thread through the fabric, like this,” she reaches over to the kit and pulls out a fresh needle and thread, nimble fingers demonstrating in a way that’s much more elegant than he’ll ever manage.  “And the stitches don’t have to be so far from the edge of the fabric.  You want to leave a little bit of space so it doesn’t unravel, but not too much, see?”

“Yeah,” he did.  She’s always so patient with him.  With all of them.  She was built by their father, but she was completely opposite to him in temperament.  She’s always been one of the few bright spots in his dark, unfair childhood.

“Here, you try.”  She proffers the sweater and needle out to him, and he hesitates for just a moment.  Ever perceptive, she catches the movement and smiles, “I have just the thing.”

That’s how, moments later, Diego has a thimble on every single finger of his non-dominant hand, ready to attempt sewing once more.  Mom had just tried to give him one, at first, but when he saw she had extras, he demanded to use all of them.  It made gripping the sweater clumsy and awkward, but if it protected him from being impaled again, he was all for it.

“Remember, just keep the stitches close.  Don’t pull too tightly on the thread, or the fabric will pucker,” she instructs calmly as he pushes the needle through the fabric once again.  This stitch was a significant improvement than the last stitch, and the next one looked even better.  His hand becomes more practiced as he goes along, and while it’s not quite as neat as his mother’s work, he soon has the entire hole stitched together in a relatively clean line.

“I did it,” he says, slightly surprised with himself as he snips the thread with a small pair of scissors.

“Of course you did, darling.  It looks wonderful,” she praises with a bright, beaming smile.  “But you know, you didn’t have to go through all of this trouble.  If you needed your clothes mended, all you had to do was ask.”

“I know.  But I wanted to do it myself,” he says, and no, that’s not quite truthful.  A different kind of nerves creeps up on Diego as he realizes that this is his moment to come clean.  He’d been waiting and waiting for the right opportunity (procrastinating, more like), and this was it.  He had to tell her.  He didn’t know how.  “I, uh, I _needed_ to do it myself.”

She picks up on his tone, and her eyebrows furrow in confusion.  “What do you mean?”

“Well, uh, I figured I should learn how to do it on my own, because, uh” God, why was this so _hard_?  He hadn’t stuttered in years, but he could feel it at the back of his throat suddenly like he was a child all over again.  “I mean, meant to tell you, but I, uh, I was accepted into the p-p-p-p-”  _Dammit_.

“Just picture the word in your mind, dear,” she reminds him.

“Police Academy.” He finally chokes out.  “I was—I was accepted into the Police Academy.”

The concern on her face is gone instantly.  She reaches out and squeezes his arm.  “Oh, I know, darling.”

“You _know?_ ”

“Yes…I saw the envelope on your desk when I was gathering your laundry last week.  I hope I haven’t upset you.”

“No,” he says, letting out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.  “No, you haven’t.  But—but I haven’t upset you?”

She looks at him blankly, “Of course not.  Why would you think that?”

“Because…it means I’m leaving.  I’m leaving the Academy…you…”

The significance of it goes unspoken.  The house has been so empty, these days.  Five and Ben have been gone for years.  Allison left for LA nearly a year ago when a talent scout had landed her a supporting role on a popular sitcom, launching her acting career.  Klaus is who knows where most of the time, only returning from his junkie benders in the city once every few weeks when he needs money; and Vanya moved out as soon as her tutoring job at her music school left her with enough to afford rent on a tiny apartment downtown.  Luther seems to be the only person not itching to escape the Academy, and he’s not exactly the definition of good company.

Essentially, if Diego leaves, he’s leaving their mother all alone.  Their mother, who isn’t allowed to leave the house, who spends hours picturing herself exploring the worlds inside the paintings on the walls, whose sole, programmed purpose was to take care of her children.

What would she be left with when he’s gone?

“Oh, don’t worry about me, dear,” she says kindly, taking him away from his troubled thoughts by cupping a hand to his cheek.  “You know, a mother’s greatest privilege is to watch her children grow up into strong, capable adults.  I’m so, so proud of the young man you’re becoming.”

“Yeah?” his eyes feel suspiciously hot and watery.

“Of course.  I couldn’t be prouder.”  He leans forward and wraps her in a hug that she returns warmly.  After a moment, she pulls back, “Oh, I’ve almost forgotten.  I have a gift for you.”

He watches with curiosity as she reaches into her apron and pulls out a small, flat square wrapped in brown paper.  She pushes it toward him with a smile, and he peels back the wrapping to reveal a folded piece of cloth. 

“Go on, unfold it,” she encourages.

He does, and he just stares.  It’s a cross-stitch.  His domino mask is stitched into the top, and below it is two crossed knives, then his name in a neat, black print.  The whole thing is surrounded by a border of little pink flowers—it’s so Mom, his heart leaps into his throat as he’s overcome with emotion.

“Do you like it?”

His head is suddenly buried in her shoulder as he embraces her once again.  She smells like floral perfume, warm bread, and machine oil.  He can feel the sleeve of her blouse dampen with his tears, but she’s never seemed to mind.  She just wraps her arms around him as he says, “I love it.  Thank you.”

“A piece of me will always be with you,” she remarks cheerfully, and he just hugs her tighter.

* * *

 

When Diego moves into his dorm room at the Police Academy, he leaves all but the necessities behind.  Some clothes.  A toothbrush.  His knives (secretly—weapons are technically against the rules, but it’s not like he’s planning to _use_ them on anyone).  His room is plain, with the same, white-painted cinderblock walls, wooden bed and desk, and dull grey linens as every other recruit.  The only personal touch he indulges in is the single square of fabric hanging above his bed, with a mask and his knives and his name surrounded by flowers.

“That’s a cute tapestry,” comes a voice as he’s securing the cross-stitch to the wall with a tack, and he turns to see another recruit leaning casually against the doorway.  She squints slightly as she inspects it more closely, “…Diego.”

“My mom made it for me,” he says defensively.  A slight hint of aggression.  Challenging her to make fun of it.  She steps forward and throws her hands in the air, a smile on her face as she tries to break the tension.

“I think it’s sweet.  My dad made me a scrapbook before I left,” she sticks out her hand.  “My name is Patch.”

He tentatively shakes it.  “I guess you know mine already.”

“They’re about to serve lunch in the cafeteria.  Interested?”

“Sure,” he concedes.  She leads the way out of the room, but Diego can’t help but throw one last look back at the cross-stitch.

A piece of her always with him.  He’d treasure it forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Has anyone else noticed the hand stitching on some of the seams of Diego's sweater? Just me? Okay.
> 
> Thank you for all of your kind support. Just one chapter left. Let me know what you think.


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